CJ Trowbridge discusses his latest land project, the High Desert Institute, and a previous one that was featured on the 2023 reality show "The Garden: Commune or Cult?"--where the founding of an anticapitalist, consensus-based community was chronicled by corporate TV channel producers for a Discovery Channel audience. We also talk about the Cyberpony Express mesh network he's working on (basically, a parallel internet outside the clutches of the telecoms oligarchs like AT&T).

CJ on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@cjtrowbridge

CJ on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@CJTrowbridge

High Desert Institute https://highdesertinstitute.org

Castro Media on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@castromedia.org

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AI is coming for our jobs, the environment, and is even starting to stand-in for human creativity. Derek Allen, Sam Kirchner and Varvara Pavlova are part of the newly formed direct action group Stop AI, which is particularly concerned about the existential threat of Artificial General Intelligence and the potential for robots to outsmart humans, which Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, says is coming this year.

Stop AI https://www.stopai.info/ "Lavender: The AI machine directing Israel's bombing spree in Gaza" (Yuval Abraham, +972 Magazine) https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

Brian Merchant's book "Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech" covers the history of the Luddite movement https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C5986948

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Erica Meiners and Priya Kandaswamy on how prison guard unions use the valor of labor movement to reinforce the prison industrial complex.

TW: Discussion of brutality, murder, sexual assault and suicide of prisoners at the hands of prison employees.

"Prisons Are Anti-Labor Institutions. We Need an Anti-Carceral Labor Movement." (Truthout) https://truthout.org/articles/prisons-are-anti-labor-institutions-we-need-an-anti-carceral-labor-movement/

Legal Aid Society: "I'm Just Collateral Damage. The Human Cost of an Illegal Prison Strike" https://legalaidnyc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/LAS_PrisonersRightsProject_ClientStoriesReport_Final.pdf

Southern Poverty Law Center on white supremacy among prison guards https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hate-watch/new-york-fired-racist-prison-guard-identity-evropa-membership/

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Malcolm Harris, on how pragmatism has been monopolized by centrists who fail to take climate change seriously—the same kind of centrists who'd trust tech industrialists to save the human race. We discuss why you need a pharmacist on your apocalypse team, and Malcolm's new book, 'What's Left', which understands how our survival depends on anti-capitalist collectivity, unlike Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's Libertarian-leaning Democratic Party think tank bestseller, 'Abundance.'

'What's Left' https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malcolm-harris/whats-left/9781668646861/?lens=little-brown

"What's the Matter with Abundance?" The Baffler https://thebaffler.com/latest/whats-the-matter-with-abundance-harris

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After last November's election, everyone from campaign consultants, to media critics, to Donald Trump himself credited alt-right media and the manosphere for making the US a more welcoming place for repressive, retrograde politics and values.

Ome (@sugarskullangelic on social media) is a sociologist and host of the podcast Liberación Army Radio, who speaks to why it's not just Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan followers who get sucked into the alt-right pipeline.

Ome's Linktree

Ome serving the public interest through analysis of the Khalil and Danisha Carter TikTok drama

Pieces mentioned:

Cheryl Harris's 'Whiteness as Property'

Olufemi O. Taiwo's 'Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else)'

Silvia Federici's 'Caliban and the Witch'

Arguably Somaya on TikTok

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A quick check-in where we look back at the longest three months in recent memory, with some notes on what's coming up.

Thanks to all our subscribers on Patreon; please join them at patreon.com/sadfrancisco

Live from the Mission! A conversation between Deeg, Deni, Jemma and Lavelle recorded March 13, 2025 at 518 Valencia Street, steps away from the Death Star known as Manny's. A night of "tales of queer insurrection" where the audience heard the short and sweet versions of the histories of three longstanding Bay Area queer movement groups: Gay Shame, LAGAI Queer Insurrection!, and Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism!

Presented in collaboration with HALA Collective and Left in the Bay; thanks also to Clean Air Network.

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Mario Riveira and Abe Woodliff's first collaborative documentary, The City of Sensitive Frauds, premieres this week. Its topic: gentrifiers and how they homogenize cities.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71eCUCI9CpM

Abe on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/realbayareamemes/

Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@abeisabadwriter

Twitter: https://x.com/HeLLaTaLL510

Mario on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mario0o0o0o0o0o

Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@mario0o0o0o0o0o

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@mario0o0o0o0o

Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco

Stephanie Lumsden is a scholar in Feminist and Native American Studies, currently teaching at UC Davis. She tells the story of a gang of Hupa tribe resistance fighters in 1860s California that included Curly-Headed Tom, who wreaked havoc on the area's settlers. Elsewhere in the conversation: the 'bad' vs. 'good Indian' dichotomy, and the concept of 'revenge' as anti-colonial resistance.

stephanielumsden.com=

Signal (the phone app) has become an obligatory download for every organizer on the Left in the US. But it was funded through one of the American government's propaganda agencies, and the atmosphere it creates is one of a neverending meeting permeated by paranoia. Epic conversation, care of Jemma DeCristo and Ralowe Ampu.

LAGAI—Queer Insurrection! [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/OTIxNTJmOWUtMDAxZi00YjgxLWExZGMtZDJlMzBjN2M0OWMx?view=apps&sort=popularity]

Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!) [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/NDI2Y2VjYTItMjcwNi00MjQ5LWFkZTMtZmQyMjE2YjdjMjQ2?view=apps&sort=popularity]

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, scholar recently on Sad Francisco [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/NjQwMzVkZGUtMzU4MC00YjdkLWI5N2MtNzk2MjdmZWM2YjJk]

SFPD racist texting scandal, 2015 edition [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/26/san-francisco-police-officers-racist-text-messages-jason-lai]

Mentioned in the introduction:

"Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet" by Yasha Levine [https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C3541049]

"Cloudflare Issue Can Leak Chat App Users' Broad Location" (Joseph Cox, 404 Media) [https://www.404media.co/cloudflare-issue-can-leak-chat-app-users-broad-location]

Past episodes with Jemma: "The Twitter Tax Break: How AOC West Sold Out SoMa" [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/MTUxODQwOGEtNDZhYy00YWQ2LWJlZjMtODdiZmNjYmE3OGM2?view=apps&sort=popularity] "Is the Transgender District a Force for Liberation or Gentrification?" [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/YmEyM2FiYzktYTA5OC00ODJkLWE4NjktZTY5YzA3MzlkYTAz?view=apps&sort=popularity] "Trans Black-Palestinian Solidarities" [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/NmYwYTkxYmEtYmYxNS00ZTQxLTk1OWItMzZjNDY3YWMwZDRm?view=apps&sort=popularity]

And Ralowe: [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/MmIyMmJiYTgtYjMxZS00MGJjLWFjYTctMTYwOTU1YmQ0YmNl?view=apps&sort=popularity]

Referenced:

"Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet" by Yasha Levine [https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C3541049] "Cloudflare Issue Can Leak Chat App Users' Broad Location" (Joseph Cox, 404 Media) [https://www.404media.co/cloudflare-issue-can-leak-chat-app-users-broad-location] Past episodes with Jemma: "The Twitter Tax Break: How AOC West Sold Out SoMa" [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/MTUxODQwOGEtNDZhYy00YWQ2LWJlZjMtODdiZmNjYmE3OGM2?view=apps&sort=popularity] "Is the Transgender District a Force for Liberation or Gentrification?" [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/YmEyM2FiYzktYTA5OC00ODJkLWE4NjktZTY5YzA3MzlkYTAz?view=apps&sort=popularity] "Trans Black-Palestinian Solidarities" [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/NmYwYTkxYmEtYmYxNS00ZTQxLTk1OWItMzZjNDY3YWMwZDRm?view=apps&sort=popularity]

And Ralowe: [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/MmIyMmJiYTgtYjMxZS00MGJjLWFjYTctMTYwOTU1YmQ0YmNl?view=apps&sort=popularity]

Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco